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And I certainly don't see the conflict of interest - what was Fauci gaining? His continued role? Yes. Obviously you don't put an arsonist in charge of fighting

And I certainly don't see the conflict of interest - what was Fauci gaining? His continued role? Yes. Obviously you don't put an arsonist in charge of fighting fires, so if this information had come out early last year then he would have lost not only his role much sooner, but also his social status and career. If what's coming out now came out last year, Trump's replacement of him with Scott Atlas would have been more widely supported (maybe), and Biden may not have dared to put him back in his post. That would have been a huge financial hit. Fauci does very well out of his position. "Very well" might even be an understatement. He is the highest paid federal employee [1], earning more in 2019 alone than the US President. Despite this fact, he has deflected questions about conflicts of interest by laughing it off and saying he has a "government salary", creating the impression he is paid far less than he really is. Fauci charges between $50,000 and $100,000 per hour for motivational speeches [2]. Despite being theoretically in charge of a crisis situation in which nobody has time to ask how it started, Fauci has found time to write a book called, "Expect the Unexpected: Ten Lessons on Truth, Service, and the Way Forward". He has also appeared on TV more than 300 times [3]. This is not a man who is too busy to investigate basic questions that may have direct relevance to developing treatments for the virus. And given that knowing where it came from would be of immense scientific value yet he has every incentive to cover it up, he is also not a man who should be running things. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/01/25/dr-anthony-fauci-the-highest-paid-employee-in-the-entire-us-federal-government/?sh=1ed4a1b5386f https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/01/25/dr-... [2] https://leadingmotivationalspeakers.com/speakers/anthony-fauci https://leadingmotivationalspeakers.com/speakers/anthony-fau... [3] https://www.aier.org/article/fauci-has-chalked-up-300-media-appearances-over-past-year/ https://www.aier.org/article/fauci-has-chalked-up-300-media-...

stef25 5y ago
This is a global pandemic that came out of China. In the worst possible case, Fauci hid the fact that an org he's involved in donated a minuscule portion of its budget to the lab from where the virus leaked due to incompetence. It's not like he took the vial home for lulz and dropped it on the subway. His role in the origin of this thing is so small it's irrelevant. The only thing that's up for discussion is that he may not have been 100% correct during one of his many public statements, hardly something that can be held against him considering the shitcreek the whole world is in. Personally I'd give the guy some credit for everything he's done right, I mean he's been at it since 1968. What is there to gain by nailing him to the cross, or pointing out his income and book deals?
- koolba 5y ago
  > This is a global pandemic that came out of China. In the worst possible case, Fauci hid the fact that an org he's involved in donated a minuscule portion of its budget to the lab from where the virus leaked due to incompetence. > It's not like he took the vial home for lulz and dropped it on the subway. His role in the origin of this thing is so small it's irrelevant. By dissuading an investigation into the cause at the time, he might have shot down our only chance of ever knowing for sure. I sure as hell don't trust China to be truthful about it. There's no incentive on their part. > The only thing that's up for discussion is that he may not have been 100% correct during one of his many public statements, hardly something that can be held against him considering the shitcreek the whole world is in. He's been spreading mixed and misinformation for months and possibly lying to Congress. Many give him the benefit of the doubt by saying that he either did not know or he did it in the interests of the public as a whole (ex: We need the N95 masks so let's lie and say nobody else does). Neither is acceptable to some of us. > Personally I'd give the guy some credit for everything he's done right, I mean he's been at it since 1968. Past good behavior doesn't get you out of a trial. At best it's a factor during sentencing. > What is there to gain by nailing him to the cross, or pointing out his income and book deals? The book deal looks like a last minute cash grab before he gets sacked.
  - geofft 5y ago
    The argument is that China is covering up the origins of COVID-19 to protect Fauci and ensure he gets rich?
  - stef25 5y ago
    > He's been spreading mixed and misinformation for months and possibly lying to Congress. Many give him the benefit of the doubt by saying that he either did not know or he did it in the interests of the public as a whole (ex: We need the N95 masks so let's lie and say nobody else does). Neither is acceptable to some of us. That very advice was offered here in Belgium as well and it smelled like BS. Obviously they had to make a hard choice: tell people they need masks, stocks get plundered and medical professionals have none. Or, say the opposite and grab every mask you can find for medical personnel. The second option was probably the best, hopefully you can understand that these kind of hard choices need to be made and this guy shouldn't lose his job over it. Interestingly, in Jan / Fed before it really hit Europe and nobody was wearing masks in public they were already sold out in most places. At the time it was probably Chinese plundering EU stores and govt must have picked up on it.
geofft 5y ago
> Yes. Obviously you don't put an arsonist in charge of fighting fires Sure, but to go back to my analogy, you absolutely do put the guy who hit the power button by mistake in charge of pressing it again - they know exactly where it is and they're already in the datacenter. You put the team that deployed a new service that's DoSing your infrastructure in charge of rolling it back. You don't say "You broke the system, so we're finding someone else to do the rollback." If the allegation is that Fauci intentionally funded a lab in Wuhan to work on gain-of-function research with the express purpose of having the virus escape and cause a global pandemic because Fauci is a murderer rivaling Hitler, that's a very different (and much harder to substantiate) claim than that he merely was causally involved in an accident and like anyone else wants the accident to not have happened. And if that is the claim, the "conflict of interest" argument becomes clearer: Fauci is on the side of COVID-19 and in charge of stopping it. It's the same conflict of interest as putting an arsonist in charge of fighting fires. Short of that, the idea that he had a conflict of interest is like the idea that the team that accidentally DoS'd the infrastructure has a conflict of interest because they each get Fauci-scale salaries and they might be fired. Technically yes, but we all know that firing them wouldn't help solve the problem and losing their expertise would make other things work, so it's not even on the table unless we suspect malice is involved. (And if it is on the table, either at my workplace or in Fauci's case, so is criminal prosecution. Loss of salary is the least of your worries.)
- thu2111 5y ago
  I don't think anyone is claiming anyone wanted it to escape, only that it was very likely, they know it was likely, that's why it had been banned but Fauci overrode the ban then started constantly lying about it and many other things for career and financial reasons. You make comparison to tech workers. Sure, if someone makes a genuine honest mistake then you can argue they should be retained as they won't make that mistake again. But that does require deep and total honesty. If a tech worker caused an outage and then manipulated management for a year to cover up their involvement, there would be no such leniency.

stef25 5y ago

This is a global pandemic that came out of China. In the worst possible case, Fauci hid the fact that an org he's involved in donated a minuscule portion of its budget to the lab from where the virus leaked due to incompetence. It's not like he took the vial home for lulz and dropped it on the subway. His role in the origin of this thing is so small it's irrelevant. The only thing that's up for discussion is that he may not have been 100% correct during one of his many public statements, hardly something that can be held against him considering the shitcreek the whole world is in. Personally I'd give the guy some credit for everything he's done right, I mean he's been at it since 1968. What is there to gain by nailing him to the cross, or pointing out his income and book deals?

koolba 5y ago
> This is a global pandemic that came out of China. In the worst possible case, Fauci hid the fact that an org he's involved in donated a minuscule portion of its budget to the lab from where the virus leaked due to incompetence. > It's not like he took the vial home for lulz and dropped it on the subway. His role in the origin of this thing is so small it's irrelevant. By dissuading an investigation into the cause at the time, he might have shot down our only chance of ever knowing for sure. I sure as hell don't trust China to be truthful about it. There's no incentive on their part. > The only thing that's up for discussion is that he may not have been 100% correct during one of his many public statements, hardly something that can be held against him considering the shitcreek the whole world is in. He's been spreading mixed and misinformation for months and possibly lying to Congress. Many give him the benefit of the doubt by saying that he either did not know or he did it in the interests of the public as a whole (ex: We need the N95 masks so let's lie and say nobody else does). Neither is acceptable to some of us. > Personally I'd give the guy some credit for everything he's done right, I mean he's been at it since 1968. Past good behavior doesn't get you out of a trial. At best it's a factor during sentencing. > What is there to gain by nailing him to the cross, or pointing out his income and book deals? The book deal looks like a last minute cash grab before he gets sacked.
- geofft 5y ago
  The argument is that China is covering up the origins of COVID-19 to protect Fauci and ensure he gets rich?
- stef25 5y ago
  > He's been spreading mixed and misinformation for months and possibly lying to Congress. Many give him the benefit of the doubt by saying that he either did not know or he did it in the interests of the public as a whole (ex: We need the N95 masks so let's lie and say nobody else does). Neither is acceptable to some of us. That very advice was offered here in Belgium as well and it smelled like BS. Obviously they had to make a hard choice: tell people they need masks, stocks get plundered and medical professionals have none. Or, say the opposite and grab every mask you can find for medical personnel. The second option was probably the best, hopefully you can understand that these kind of hard choices need to be made and this guy shouldn't lose his job over it. Interestingly, in Jan / Fed before it really hit Europe and nobody was wearing masks in public they were already sold out in most places. At the time it was probably Chinese plundering EU stores and govt must have picked up on it.

geofft 5y ago

> Yes. Obviously you don't put an arsonist in charge of fighting fires Sure, but to go back to my analogy, you absolutely do put the guy who hit the power button by mistake in charge of pressing it again - they know exactly where it is and they're already in the datacenter. You put the team that deployed a new service that's DoSing your infrastructure in charge of rolling it back. You don't say "You broke the system, so we're finding someone else to do the rollback." If the allegation is that Fauci intentionally funded a lab in Wuhan to work on gain-of-function research with the express purpose of having the virus escape and cause a global pandemic because Fauci is a murderer rivaling Hitler, that's a very different (and much harder to substantiate) claim than that he merely was causally involved in an accident and like anyone else wants the accident to not have happened. And if that is the claim, the "conflict of interest" argument becomes clearer: Fauci is on the side of COVID-19 and in charge of stopping it. It's the same conflict of interest as putting an arsonist in charge of fighting fires. Short of that, the idea that he had a conflict of interest is like the idea that the team that accidentally DoS'd the infrastructure has a conflict of interest because they each get Fauci-scale salaries and they might be fired. Technically yes, but we all know that firing them wouldn't help solve the problem and losing their expertise would make other things work, so it's not even on the table unless we suspect malice is involved. (And if it is on the table, either at my workplace or in Fauci's case, so is criminal prosecution. Loss of salary is the least of your worries.)

thu2111 5y ago
I don't think anyone is claiming anyone wanted it to escape, only that it was very likely, they know it was likely, that's why it had been banned but Fauci overrode the ban then started constantly lying about it and many other things for career and financial reasons. You make comparison to tech workers. Sure, if someone makes a genuine honest mistake then you can argue they should be retained as they won't make that mistake again. But that does require deep and total honesty. If a tech worker caused an outage and then manipulated management for a year to cover up their involvement, there would be no such leniency.